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The three most important elements when starting out with marketing on the internet is to 1) define success and 2) know your target audience 3) listen to your customers.
Once you form a foundation for your web strategy, the execution becomes easy. The goal is to constantly test and use different campaigns from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to email marketing in an attempt to achieve business objectives.

Thanks for your feedback! I'm actually currently working for a startup called needls.com, which is a new lead generation tool that scours Twitter and Facebook to deliver real time leads to small business owners, entrepreneurs and independent professionals.

What do you mean by that Lomey? Needls.com uses social media to find you potential clients who are looking for the services you offer. Get set up with a free account at needls.com today to see for yourself how it works.

I just stumbled on your needles site - interesting idea! I will give it a try. In the meantime, I just wanted to contribute with my thoughts on your question. Based on my experience there are 4-5 ways to create leads for your work:

1. Reach out and start networking-offline: yes, it still is the best of the best. Two or three invitations from Fora related to your work will get you going. There is nothing best like a handshake and a great warm smile, believe me. Besides, never forget: person-to-person will never wear off or fade away

2. Connecting online: LinkedIn is a great tool for the job, but you need to give it time. I would suggest you search for Jean Konrath: she wrote 2 great .pdfs: One: LinkedIn sales secrets revealed Two: Cracking the LinkedIn sales code. Try and google the name and you will find your way

3. Connect to work streams and get a steady flow of work. For instace in Digital Marketing, we make a connection with Digital Agencies who take a lot of work from clients and there is always some remnant work to pass on to someone. You reach out for the equivalent in your market and specialty, making a 80%-20% deal: 20% is their referral fee, as you will be doing the work you will also get most of the money.

4. Freelance sites, like elance and odesk as well as guru.com are a good channel for getting leads to new work. Try to avoid low balling as it will get you nowhere - there are people who bid projects from 3rd world countries for $3/hour, but you don't want to fall to this trap, and most importantly, you don't want their clients. Make sure you have a good portfolio to show, this is all that matters. And bid high.

5. A website, with reviews about past work, making it personal, promoting yourself and/or your team. This is the last thing you must do before you are ready to really take off. You can do your SEO and everything, but I would not bet on it as it takes time to settle for your keywords. Instead, I would use Google Adwords and 'pay per action' (not pay per click or impressions). By paying per action, you will only pay when you get a contact form filled and sent through your site, or anything else that you define as 'action' and has a monetary value for you. So you will be able to open your campaigns and get as many clicks as you like on your ads, but you only pay per result. More specifically, for the needles site of your client, they can start an advertising campaign on adwords using the banner network, initially paying per click-not impressions, to generate awareness and start a viral effect. As soon as they meet Google's goals for converting to Pay-Per-Action, (15 conversions in 30 days) they migrate to this payment model and open the campaign throughout the country. They can define as 'result' or 'conversion' a registration to needles.

5. E-mail. In conjunction with 1. and 2. and especially after building the site, e-mail is a must.

Kostas is right

He presented a very robust plan helping you get your first clients. A few words to add: when you start getting your clients, you will suddenly realize that there are clients which are the best ones for you - they either pay fast, or are generous, etc. Try to focus on them most of the time. For example, if they call you, you will have to answer their calls first, even if you have another client on the line, etc.

Let your worst clients go. Let other people have this headache.

And then try to adjust your services according to the needs of these clients. In this way you will be able to attract even more of such clients.